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Published by Woebegone but Hopeful

I have been writing for 30+ years and until I started taking seriously all the advice and support from Word Press had badly written and self-published a fantasy trilogy with nothing to show for it, except for a mention on Amazon.
That was all written back in July(ish) 2015 when I was in one of comedic/ironic phases. Since coming under the more maturing, positive, adventurous and productive influences of the Wordpress Community I have tried to work outside of that bubble.
Since that hapless daze I have published through Amazon Kindle 'A True History of The Isles' ' (a history of the Isles Ireland, Scotland Wales & England) Vol I & II which is less than serious and 'Of Patchwork Warriors' first volume of a multi-volume Fantasy. All three has sold copies. This is far beyond my dreams.
After these few years I have decided to separate my 'bolggings' heroicallybad will continue to be dealing with writing in all its manifold facets. I will continue to support folk in their own efforts.
My intention is to write until I am summoned from this World Physical, while I am still physically on the planet I will encourage others to write. Not subscribing to any sort of publishing conventions my advice on that subject is not the best.
Well into my 60s I've hit my writing stride!
However as I am something of a ranter and given to polemics there is another blog Raging from the Lectern, this is ferocious and I don't care who I upset, the world is growing tight on resources and space, we have no room for idiots of any sort, they are my target. No apologies!
View all posts by Woebegone but Hopeful

36 thoughts on “Look At Your Hands damn you!!!”

The thing is it’s worse that that, George Washinton way back when stated that people had a right o bear arms if necessary from the Government itself. Attempts to introduce gun control are seen by the NRA as attempts by the government to overrule and dominate the people, taking away their freedom. Or that’s their excuse.

Hi Simon.
Culturally I sort of ‘get it’ if it were just one handgun for self-defence or a rifle for hunting (there are parts of the deprived rural areas of the USA where folk literally go hunting for food, because the state does just not provide).
But this ‘thing’ with semi-automatics? And dozens of them? There is no justification for that.
I’m just spitting angry today that another group of people going about their own business have been slaughtered because of business interests and neo-right dogmas! (And a spineless administration)

This is the thing, apparently there are sections in family stores where they sell automatic rifles on offer in much the same way as TV’s. I’m not sure how true this is but if it is then it’s another level of crazy.

What is worrying is with the level of anger in the debate, is there a danger of gun battles between militias?
The vast majority of Americans would go nowhere near this sort of thing, but as we know from the antics of some idiots in the UK, it only needs a few.

I have read and heard statements to that effect Simon:
Charleton Heston: referred to ‘them’ having to be taking a gun from his ‘cold, dead hand’.
What complicates matters is the shooter in this case was confronted by a member of the public who was carrying a legal hand weapon and took pursuit of the man.
If I lived in the USA in that climate I’d think about owning a small, modest gun. But these automatic and semi-automatic guns? No way!!

If I may butt in here: I don’t own a gun, though I did, long ago in the north. We hunted for food, and we had to deal with predatory animals who didn’t think our barbed wire fences meant the cattle wasn’t for them. Apart from these dwindling reasons, two valid reasons for never owning a gun: Reason One: given the provocation, I would use it in a knee-jerk emotional moment. Reason Two: regardless of the provocation, I could never use it on another human being. To me, that’s a case closed. I have yet to discover a legitimate use for owning a gun in a civilized society unless it is to admit that our system is a failure, and we need to “take the law in our own – bloody – hands.” If that is the case then anarchy rules regardless of the social trappings it hides within. When you have anarchy then all philosophical and moral discussions become moot.

All comments welcome here Sha’ Tara.
Reason One & Two: Why I personally should stay in the UK and never own a gun, in certain charged circumstances I have zero fuse.
There is this danger. There is no pretending that unless the US administrations toughen up and take much of the heat (in the normal descriptive term and in the street word term) out of the situation one day they are going to have to stand-off between rival armed groups and I’m not talking about criminal gangs.

Yes. Of course there is now an understandable fear factor over this issue.
It’s a sobering thought to wonder on this question:
‘If I was living in the USA. Would I have a gun? Just in case I needed to protect my family?’
Puts our Brexit Comic turn in perspective.

I think it largely doesn’t matter if you have a gun in the US, you might be lucky and be able to defend yourself but I’m all the cases of mass shootings this have been the case. The thinking is flawed unless you view everyone as the enemy.

It’s complicated Simon, but the really hard faction of the gun lobby go about arguing along the lines of it’s their right to drive at 100mph drunk (or drugged). There were about 200 mass shootings (victims of 4 or more) in the USA from 1st January to 1st October; that should be telling the legislative body something,…..you think? (I’d feel safer in a room of minions doing self-assembly of furniture).
Brexit…I missed another financial opportunity, marketing T-shirts with the phrase ‘Told you’.
(Do you recall the Monty Python sketch with a military court and their version of ‘Anything Goes?’…. these days should be our National Anthem- with the gestures).
As Fred Flintstone used to say in the old cartoons with a sigh ‘Oh boy!’

Indeed! History is only interesting when you are far away from the events.
I’m enjoying writing my own take, but I’ll never be able to do The 20th Century, too close, too bloody, too brutal (even by 17th century standards).

We never learn. There are so many important lessons in history. I’m very glad one of my grandsons in studying this at University, he is an intelligent and perceptive lad, just the sort we need for the future.

We are definitely in the Crisis Mode with no end in sight!
Thanks Simon, it would be cool to see that happen! The House of Commons would have to accept some very strong-minded intelligently constructed arguments- which would make a change.

Yep! We’re at the stage now to quote from Michael Herr’s book on the Vietnam war ‘It’s like the Captain of the Titanic saying …Nothing to worry about folks, we’ve just stop to take on a little ice for the drinks…’

It’s a quote I never grow tired of.
The only ones who seem to make a credible argument against Brexit are on the Left on the grounds that a large multi-national combination of any sort squashes the ‘little’ person… being on the Very Left myself I can understand it, although I prefer to work from within (It’s a Civil Service ‘thing’).
Meanwhile we have a crew handling things that make the Minions look like a tight, efficient, rational crew.

Well Roger, I don’t mind them killing each other at home – it is, after all, their prerogative to do so, majority rule and all of that. What I despise about “America” is the much greater wanton killing of innocents all over the planet and their lame justifications for doing it, and how easily the rest of the western world goes along with the various Washington-instigated genocides, from Guatemala to Iraq. Mass shootings and murdering cops, well, karma’s a bitch and I said it 50 years ago and it bears repeating: sooner or later the chickens will come home to roost. America is a land filled with seething hate, anger and violence. WordPress Americans are not representative of the spirit of “America” – Trump and his military handlers; racist sheriffs; billionaire Wall Street thieves; the slave-prison mentality; bigotry; racism against blacks and “illegal” immigrants; the forever wars supported by the most ignorant cultural arrogance imaginable: that IS America.

I can agree with you on some points Sha’ Tara, but children and ordinary folk as often in the case died in this one.
Whereas the USA is complicit in many injustices, in the sad story of history there is not one nation or peoples which have morphed into nations that is innocent of these crimes. As far as I can make out only some aboriginal tribes on the far margins of extremes of environments could be considered not to have carried out such acts. It just so happens the USA, Russia & China are currently the big players, and have been in the post WWII (turn back the clock to the 16th-19th Centuries and it would have been Spain, France, Netherlands, Portugal & Britain (although Spain eased off a bit in the mid-1800s). USA picked up the habit in the 1800s while Russia & China mostly restricted themselves to internal slaughtering.
We are observing another side of Human Folly. I mourn for any folk going about their ordinary business to be so cruelly fated- tests my own Faith I can tell you.

Yes, when you put it that way, sorrow can replace the “so what” shrug. I agree, and history, however biased, agrees, with you that all politically or racially-determined units have indulged in mass murder and genocide. This gives all the more credence to my “warning” that we should embrace, and quickly, compassion and self-empowerment as our modus operandi. The collective path we are on is only conducive to more destruction and death. Perhaps, and I subscribe to this view, we are on the threshold of becoming a new species but our fear of the unknown is forcing us to continue supporting a failed status quo. This collective fear could spell the end of our tenure here as physical entities. We will, of course, continue to exist in the cosmos in some form or other, in some reality or other. Why does that remind me, again, of your story, Patchwork Warriors? Fiction it may be, but there’s much truth in it.

We must adapt now. We have created weapons and machines which consume far much more than anything of even 70 years ago. The room for manoeuvre and error is narrowing beyond a tipping point.
I place my faith in the acts of small kindness and modest heroics of the ordinary folk, that these in their many millions will overwhelm the destructive forces.
Thanks so much for bringing The Patchwork folk into this, I’m a bit overwhelmed (11.20pm here in the uk) by that comparison. So I bid you good night and will dwell on that comparison.